Extending SharePoint RMS (IRM) Support to Mobile

Microsoft RMS support, also know as Information Rights Management (IRM), has been supported in SharePoint since the SharePoint V3 release. This functionality allows you to limit the actions that users can take on documents or files that have been downloaded from SharePoint lists or libraries. RMS encrypts the downloaded files and limits the set of users that are allowed to decrypt these files. RMS can also limit the rights of the users who are allowed to read files so that they cannot do additional things such as print copies of the files or copy text from them. When people download files in an IRM-enabled list or library, the files are encrypted so that only authorized people can view them. This functionality works great if you are opening a SharePoint file on your desktop, but what happens if you want to access these SharePoint files on your mobile device? TITUS has introduced an iOS app that allow you to extend SharePoint IRM to iPhone and iPad devices.

A growing number of Mobile Device Management (MDM) vendors now offer secure document containers and direct access to SharePoint to allow users to view SharePoint documents on mobile devices. MobileIron offers their Docs@Work app and AirWatch has their Secure Content Locker. The problem with these apps, as well as the iOS and Android operating systems, is that they are not RMS aware. When you try to open an RMS file in iOS (using the Quick Viewer) you will get this type of result:

The viewer does not recognize an RMS protected document so nothing gets displayed. What you need is a mobile app that is RMS aware and can recognize RMS protected documents regardless if they are in their native Office file format (doc, docx, xls, xlsx, etc), or in the new Microsoft RMS pfile format. TITUS Docs is such an app. TITUS Docs allows users to access, store, and view RMS protected documents sent as attachments in email or accessed from repositories such as SharePoint. The solution provides a secure container for corporate information, keeping it secure with FIPS-140 compliant AES 256-bit encryption.

Once SharePoint access is configured you can browse your SharePoint site and libraries:

Once your mobile device has access to a SharePoint library through TITUS Docs you can open RMS protected documents (if you have the appropriate permissions) and you can view the permissions on the document:

View RMS protected documents

As a bonus, TITUS Docs can also allow you to open RMS protected emails and documents received in Apple iOS Mail. The TITUS Docs app is supported on both iPhones and iPads, and works with both ADRMS and the new AzureRMS (cloud based).